Towards Standardizing Perceptual Voice Quality Measures

描述(由申请人提供)：对嗓音质量的判断极大地有助于患者对其嗓音的看法，并有助于临床医生决定开始和继续治疗。音质判断也被用来作为标准，根据它来验证声音的工具测量。然而，由于可靠性和未经检验的效度方面的问题，这些对语音质量的“主观”测量并没有被高度视为临床或研究工具。我们假设，语音质量测量中的问题不是源于收听者，而是源于用于测量收听者听到的内容的方法。这项研究不同于传统的分级标准方法，通过应用病理性语音质量语音合成器来研究语音质量测量的可靠性和有效性的基本问题，并确定构成语音质量感知的声学要素的知觉重要性。在这种方法中，听者调整合成器参数以实现与原始声音的知觉匹配。这种调整技术的方法明确地将声学信号与语音质量联系起来。我们假设，通过为听者提供一个客观的工具(合成器)来量化他们听到的东西，这种跨语音链的联系增加了所产生的知觉反应的有效性、可靠性和实用性。拟议的研究集中在四个具体目标上。首先，我们将扩展、改进和自动化我们的合成器，以增加功率、灵活性和易用性。其次，我们将应用合成器来检查病态声音的几个关键方面的知觉重要性，包括声源频谱的形状、周期倍增以及声源中谐波和非谐和(噪声)能量的知觉相互作用。在每种情况下，我们将确定哪些声学特征在感知上是重要的，以及这些特征是否与其他特征相互作用，我们将估计参数的刚刚-明显的差异，作为在该维度上具有临床意义的声学变化量的指数。第三，我们将评估临床医生将合成器作为测量临床语音质量的工具的能力。我们还将重新讨论在评级协议中使用合成锚作为调整任务方法的替代方法。最后，我们将通过比较来自持续元音的感知测量和来自连续语音的感知测量来评估合成技术的外部有效性。通过提高合成器的使用能力和易用性，测试听者对重要声学变量的敏感性，并研究该方法的泛化能力，所提出的研究将使我们的标准化语音质量评估协议的目标变得容易实现。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Judgments of voice quality contribute greatly to patients' opinions of their voice, and to a clinician's decision to initiate and continue treatment. Quality judgments are also used as a standard against which instrumental measures of voice are validated. Nevertheless, these "subjective" measures of voice quality are not highly regarded as either clinical or research tools, because of problems with reliability and untested validity. We hypothesize that problems in voice quality measurement do not originate within the listener, but rather derive from the methods used to measure what listeners hear. The proposed research departs from traditional rating scale methods by applying a speech synthesizer for pathological voice quality to study basic issues concerning reliability and validity of voice quality measures, and to determine the perceptual importance of the acoustic elements that underlie voice quality perception. In this approach, listeners adjust synthesizer parameters to achieve a perceptual match to the original voice. This method of adjustment technique explicitly links the acoustic signal to voice quality. We hypothesize that this linkage across the speech chain increases the validity, reliability, and utility of the resulting perceptual responses, by providing listeners with an objective tool (a synthesizer) for quantifying what they hear. The proposed research focuses on four specific aims. First, we will expand, refine, and automate our synthesizer, to increase power, flexibility, and ease of use. Secondly, we will apply the synthesizer to examine the perceptual importance of several key aspects of pathologic voices, including the shape of the source spectrum, period doubling, and the perceptual interactions of harmonic and inharmonic (noise) energy in the voice source. In each case, we will determine which acoustic features are perceptually important and whether these features interact with others, and we will estimate just-noticeable-differences for the parameter as an index of the amount of acoustic change that is clinically meaningful on that dimension. Thirdly, we will evaluate clinicians' ability to apply the synthesizer as a tool for measuring voice quality in the clinic. We will also revisit the use of synthetic anchors in rating protocols as an alternative to the method of adjustment task. Finally, we will evaluate the external validity of the synthesis technique by comparing perceptual measures derived from sustained vowels to those derived from continuous speech. By increasing the power and ease of the synthesizer's use, examining listener sensitivity to important acoustic variables, and studying the generalizability of this approach, the proposed research will bring our goal of a standardized voice quality evaluation protocol within reach.